Backup Windows Server 2003, part 4

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
What is backup?
Types of backups
Volume Shadow Copy Technology
Permissions
System state data
Restore system state data
Backup data
Where are the log files?
Restore data
Use the Restore and Manage Media tab
Advanced options
Recovery Console
Install Recovery Console
Remove Recovery Console
Automated System Recovery
Create an ASR set
Recover using ASR

Use the Restore and Manage Media tab

This is the tab where you format tapes, mark a tape as free, delete catalogs etc. And everything is very simple to do, just right click the object you want to do something with, and choose what you want to do.

Advanced Options

There are a lot of other options you can set to get the Backup Utility to work as you want. You access this from the Tools menu and then click Options. I will not write about everything here, instead I recommend you take a look there and if there is some option you do not understand, use the ? in the upper right to get more info about it.

Recovery Console

When nothing else works, Recovery Console saves you. You can use Recovery Console when you cannot boot into safe mode to read and write data (including NTFS) on local drives, enable and disable services, and many other things.

You can start the Recovery Console in two ways:

Boot the Windows Server 2003 CD and start the setup. When the text-based setup begins follow the prompts and choose recover by pressing R
Select Recovery Console from the list of available Operating Systems. To do this you must run a x86-based computer and install Recovery Console.

When you have started the Recovery Console, you will have to choose which Operating System to recover (if you are multi-booting). After that you will be prompted for the password for the administrator account. When you are logged on you will get a console from which you perform all tasks. This console is very similar to the command prompt in Windows Server 2003. The only command you have to remember is help. By writing that you will get a list of available commands to use. If you don’t know how to use a command, write the command name followed by /? . To exit the Recovery Console, write exit.

Install Recovery Console

You can only install the Recovery Console on a x86-based computer.

Click Start and then Run
Type (where x is the CD-ROM drive letter) x:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons
Follow the wizard

Remove Recovery Console

Open My Computer and double click the hard drive on which you installed the Recovery Console
Click on Tools->Folder Options
Click on the View tab, check Show hidden files and folders and clear the Hide protected operating system files check box
At the root directory delete the folder Cmdcons and the file Cmldr
Right click My Computer and click Properties
Click on the Advanced tab and under Startup and Recovery click the Settings button
In System startup click the Edit button. This will display boot.ini in Notepad
Remove the entry for Recovery Console, it will look like: C:\cmdcons\bootsect.dat=”Microsoft Windows Recovery Console” /cmdcons
Save the file

Remember that the boot.ini is a very important file, and if you modify this incorrectly you can cause the computer to not boot up.

Automated System Recovery

Do you remember Emergency Repair Disk (ERD)? Forget about it. Well, ok, not yet, you have probably still some Windows 2000 Servers. But ERD is replaced by Automated System Recovery (ASR) in Windows Server 2003. ASR is a last resort and should only be used when options like Safe Mode and Last Known Good Configuration fails. ASR consists of two parts – backup and restore. The backup part can be accessed through the Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard in the Backup Utility. This wizard backs up the System State data, system services and all disks associated with the operating system components. It also creates a floppy disk that you should store in a safe place. This floppy disk contains for example information about the backup.

When recovering by using ASR it will use the floppy disk to read the disk configuration and restore the disk signatures, volumes and partitions that is required to start your computer. ASR then installs a simple installation of Windows and automatically starts to restore from the backup ASR created in the wizard.

ASR will not backup data files. That should be backed up separately.

Create an ASR set

Start the Backup Utility by clicking Start->Run and type ntbackup
The Backup or Restore Wizard starts by default, we will not use this(though we could) , so click the Advanced mode link
On the Welcome tab, click Automated System Recovery Wizard
The wizard is pretty self-explained so follow it

Recover using ASR

Boot from the Windows Server 2003 CD and start the installation.
If you have a mass storage controller and must install drivers for it, do that by pressing F6 when prompted
Press F2 when prompted. You will be prompted to insert the ASR floppy, do that.
Follow the wizard
You will reboot and if you pressed F6 previously, do that again when prompted
Follow the wizard

[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ Next ]